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Rissoles of Cold Meat

A fried patty made from chopped cold meat, mashed potatoes, and a savory sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Rissoles of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped meat, mashed potatoes, parsley, onion, pepper, and salt.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour. Add the stock, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup; stir over heat until it boils and thickens.

  3. Mix the thickened sauce with the meat mixture and add the beaten egg.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into balls with floured hands.

  2. Fry the balls in hot oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a napkin with fried parsley or in a border of mashed potatoes with brown gravy.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Forms the bulk of the rissoles and gives them their main flavour.
Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and softness to the filling, keeping the rissoles tender.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock sauce and helps bind the filling together.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the rissoles hold their shape when fried.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce before mixing. The sauce must boil and thicken fully before it goes into the meat. If it is thin, the mixture will be too wet to shape and may fall apart in the hot oil.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, potato, butter, onion, flour, sauce, ketchup):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, butter, onion, flour, sauce, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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